Lucy Worsley is familiar to PBS viewers for her investigative portraits of legendary royals like Henry VIII and his many wives. Now, she uncovers in her 3-part Sunday night series, “Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen” the secrets behind the world’s best-selling writer.
“She stands out in the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of crime writing,” the 1920 and ‘30s, Worsley, 49, said of Christie (1890-1976) in a Zoom interview from London. “Two things she can be credited with that were picked up by other writers were the serial killer story with ‘The ABC Murders’ — that’s the first of the genre — and the second is the detective story set in the past, like ‘Death Comes as the End’ set in ancient Egypt. That was unique.”
As for the biggest misconceptions about Christie, who is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare?
“Where to start?” Worsley asked. “That’s why she’s so fascinating. To start with a really obvious one, people tend to think of her as ‘a little old lady in a tweed suit sitting in her garden,’ like Miss Marple. I think that was a strategy to protect herself from prying eyes.
“She wasn’t always that person. When she was young, she liked driving fast cars. Intellectually. she made statements about being a professional woman. The second thing is what happened in 1926.
“She’d been on a roll and after ’26 she withdrew.”
That was due to a notorious scandal prompted by the death of her mother, which left her depressed, followed by her husband Archie’s desire for a divorce – he’d fallen in love with another woman.
“She disappeared,” Worsley noted. Her abandoned car was found near a cliff. It was feared she’d drowned. It turns out she had checked into a hotel a distance away, using the name of her husband’s mistress. The tabloid coverage was vicious, saying she abandoned her only daughter.
“I think those things are deeply wrong and unfair,” Worsley said. “In ever so many books about her you’ll read it was duplicity on her part, a bad woman. She did this because she was ill. She had a psychological illness which is a fugue state.
“That’s the central injustice of her life, one I’d like to overturn.”
Worsley is Chief Curator at Historical Royal Palaces, an independent charity in the UK.
“It looks at royal palaces that the royal family don’t live in anymore. So you can buy a ticket and visit Hampton Court Palace and Kensington Palace.
“I’ve been working there for 20 years and they’ve been extraordinarily flexible so I don’t have to give up my day job,” to do her PBS shows.
“Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen” airs on GBH 44 Sunday at midnight, and on GBH 2 Dec. 10 and 17. Check wgbh.org for listings.